I firmly believe most opposition to gay marriage stems from the desire to maintain institutional male dominance over women. Same-sex unions demonstrate that marriages need not be based on gender-based power differentials. “Who is the man and who is the woman?” homobigots ask, because they cannot–and do not want to–envision egalitarian partnerships. If gay marriage exists under the marriage umbrella, then marriage needn’t mean male headship over a woman.

:cue pants-shitting:

Patriarchy defenders are understandably terrified in the wake of Judge Vaughn Walker’s decision to overturn California’s Proposition 8. Ross Douthat cloaks his bigotry in a transparent sheet of pseudo-intellectual blather. He concedes that so-called “traditional marriage” is not traditional, nor is lifelong heterosexual monogamy natural. But, it is a Western, Judeo-Christian ideal, and should remain the ideal, according to Douthat.

[L]ifelong heterosexual monogamy at its best can offer something distinctive and remarkable — a microcosm of civilization, and an organic connection between human generations — that makes it worthy of distinctive recognition and support.

If you say so.
Douthat concludes that gay marriage threatens to shake “traditional marriage” off its pedestal, and that’s a bad thing because “traditional marriage” deserves its pedestal, because [return to the beginning and continue 'round and 'round].

But brace yourselves! Because Douthat’s column is nothing compared to Sam Schulman’s opinion in the Christian Science Monitor.

If the purpose of marriage was for the exclusive benefit of couples in love, who wanted to share a life and a household, it would be a clear affront to justice to keep this state benefit from other couples who happen to possess a different kind of sexuality from the majority.

Right on!

But providing benefits to couples is not the whole purpose of marriage. It’s not even its primary purpose. And that’s what’s wrong with Mr. Walker’s ruling, and the arguments on both sides of Perry vs. Schwarzenegger. They’ve been arguing over marriage’s benefits. Instead, we need to be thinking about marriage’s role in sustaining the existence of the human species.

Oh, fuck the human species. The human species is not in danger of extinction and if it is, we’ll be destroyed by our disregard for the planet, not by gay marriage. People have been procreating out of wedlock since people came into existence.

Marriage is a necessary defense of a woman’s sexuality and her human liberty from determined assault by men who would turn her into a slave, a concubine – something less than fully human. Human communities need to give women some additional degree of protection – through law, custom, religious decree, or sacrament – generally some combination of all three, neatly summarized by the plaintiffs, who demanded the sacred and the eternal from the state of California. Of course, marriage’s power to protect women is far from perfect, but no human institution is. Parents, too, sometimes do awful things to their children.

I see what you did there, Schulman. Protect a child woman from all men by binding her to one specific man. He goes on to argue that homosexual relationships are not inferior to heterosexual relationships; instead:

Heterosexual relationships need marriage because of inferiority: the physical inferiority of sexual defenders to sexual attackers and the moral inferiority of male sexual attackers.

How Victorian. But feminists hate men, amirite? How are male sexual attackers identified? Are we to presume they are not entering into marriages that allegedly protect the female partners? Or is a lifetime of abuse from one’s husband preferable to the abuse from boogeymen? So many questions.

When a woman’s sexuality is involved, human communities must deal with a malign force that an individual woman and her family cannot control or protect.

What is this I don’t even.

Modern marriage is only the least worst version of marriage that has emerged from all this – but it is still necessary for women. What protects women, ultimately, is that marriage laws and customs confer upon her independence something extra – dignity, protection, sacredness – that others must respect. And if this quality can be bestowed upon anyone, even those not in intersexual relationships – it reduces, even dissolves its force.

Gay marriage is wrong because it leaves women in same-sex partnerships vulnerable to male sexual predators? Because marriages between men distract those men from their woman-protecting duties? Gay marriage is Kryptonite to hetero superheros? If Schulman’s claims are true, it would make more sense to advocate forcing all people into hetero marriages at a certain age, not denying equal marriage rights to homosexuals.

If marriage becomes a legislative courtesy available to everyone, like a key to the city, it will be women who will lose.

The insincere concern-trolling is repulsive. Nowhere does he explain how, exactly, the human species will die out as a result of gay marriage. He barely even mentions gay people. He’s shitting his pants because he rightly believes gay marriage will further push open the door to different understandings of what marriage can be. More specifically, he thinks women need to be controlled by men. For our own good, of course.

You know, after wading through all that b.s. my dad’s belief that gay marriage is wrong “because God says so” almost seems understandable. Wouldn’t it be easier for these douchebags to just say the same thing – I mean, they don’t have to PROVE it or even have any evidence as long as they say “but it’s what I believe”.

sometimes i think i’ve stepped into the twilight zone. same sex marriage does not defile, jeopardize or “threaten to shake” traditional marriage.

If David and Steven want to tie the knot what the hell does that have to do with Mary and Dexter (excuse the names)wanting to do the same?

Denying people their right afforded by the constitution to wed is DISCRIMINATION. Period! The constitution doesn’t define marriage. However, these bigots and fanatics (hiding behind religion) definitely want to RE-define it.

Yeah, because married women never ever get raped. This douchebag’s argument would work better if it were for why all women should carry tasers, not for why all women should get married as some sort of rape preventative.

Marriage is a necessary defense of a woman’s sexuality and her human liberty from determined assault by men who would turn her into a slave, a concubine
Sounds like a defense of lesbianism, not marriage.
This is why they lost the case. There is no reasonable or logical case against marriage equality.

How does tying yourself to one person lead to your independence? Or even lead to your seksual liberation? Independence by it’s very definition is something you attain alone. At what point do the media outlets who publish this garbage (and I understand the CSM isn’t a bastion of fairness or free from bias) are held accountable for trying to systematically redefine every word in the English language? Women are not “liberated” in hetero marriage unless they fight for an equal partnership. Nor are they protected from our culture, obsessed as it is with ensuring we remain merely objects, when they put a ring on and sign a paper. The concern troll call was right, If you care at all about women, don’t redefine our freedom and instead work to dismantle the culture. What a douchenozzle.

Douthat’s argument boils down to: kids need their biological parents, let’s officially support that setup (ONLY) in society. But in his own column he says gay couples can raise kids just fine. I don’t think his argument is internally consistent.

As for Schulman’s: marital rape exemptions that existed in the US until around 1993. That’s sexual slavery right there, inside marriage.

Spark, that’s exactly what I thought too. If there’s a “determined assault by men,” then aren’t those men the problem then? I doubt gay men are behind a “determined assault” on women, so it must be the heteros he’s talking about. So then, WTF does same sex marriage even have to do with it at that point?

I generally like the CSM… even when the columns present an opinion different from my own, the arguments are usually well formed enough to give me reason to think. The stupidity and flimsy reasoning of this one makes my head hurt though.

Dave, I was surprised to read this in the CSM, too. I don’t usually read their op-eds, but I think their reporting is pretty good.

Douthat’s piece is the best example of begging the question I’ve ever read; but Schulman’s is just absurd: Preshus wimmen need to be protected from the savagery of men, so they must be married to…uh, men.

The more conservatives put forth arguments like these, ie arguments based in absolutely no legal analysis, the more I am certain that gay marriage is a train that’s barreling towards the station and nothing is going to stop it.

Oh, fuck the human species. The human species is not in danger of extinction and if it is, we’ll be destroyed by our disregard for the planet, not by gay marriage.

Ha!

What’s weird about this type of argument is the assumption that once gay people are given equal rights, previously heterosexual people are going to shack up with same-sex partners en masse, because there’s nothing left to stop them. It’s like marriage inequality is the lid on a giant can of closeted homosexuality – I mean, why else would anyone think that legalizing gay marriage would lead to the demise of the human species?

Also, to anyone with a basic understanding of feminism, the “we need marriage to protect women from men” line of thinking is laughable, as others have pointed out above. It also seems to me to be a way of drawing attention away from who women need protecting from – because somehow, I don’t think it’s gay people wanting to get married.

SarahMC, thanks for taking one for the team and getting through that pile of dog vomit. I shudder to think that he proofread this and thought, “Yep, that will hold up,” and then an editor gave it the green light. Bad form.

It is preposterous to assert that the sudden presence of a ring on my finger and a legal construct sanctioning it will protect me from the rapists. There won’t suddenly be a shield around me next summer after my wedding. Indeed, I have been known to leave the house unaccompanied by the watchful eye of Mr. ausgezeichnet, and I have come back unscathed every time. Really, if you follow Schulman’s chain of logic, he is advocating that women not walk around without their husbands in tow, just to be safe. What a wonderful idea. I bet that would work out just swimmingly for everyone. Someone should try that sometime.

Also, SarahMC wisely wrote, “I suppose these folks fear that, if given the opportunity to have wives rather than husbands, women will choose the former.” This is so completely right on that I don’t even know what else to say about it. It is completely gross how many people in 2010 think !Teh Gayz! are constantly on a recruiting mission.

I wish those opposed to gay marriage would just drop the pretext and state their true reasons for opposition to gay marriage-which is almost always “the Bible says so” or “I hate gay people.” Instead, they cloak their bigotry in such soft terms that it sometimes hides their true beliefs.

I would like to see a historical defense of the tradition of marriage as he defines it. I think that would be pretty interesting, since ‘traditional’ marriage certianly didn’t look anything like what most people seem to mean. I don’t think one generation counts as a tradition, do you?

That anyone could seriously state that marriage laws historically have protected women is just laughable. I guess it makes sense if he means they “protected” women from the tragedy of being considered human beings.

@Kate: I am so with you. Anytime someone starts blathering about protecting “traditional marriage”, or better yet, “biblical marriage”, I get a very confused look on my face and ask, “Oh, like incest and polygamy?”

[...] heterosexism by talking about what traditional marriage really means and how and why it’s supposedly good for women: Marriage is a necessary defense of a woman’s sexuality and her human liberty from determined [...]